September 2001
Process Automation With a Human Touch
by Debra Haverson
Even the most complex business processes can now be placed online and handled in a completely automated fashion. Enterprise application integration (EAI) can be used to map back-end data sources to disparate applications and unified portal interfaces. Real-time inventory and manufacturing information can be linked to automatically track product outages and substitute alternatives. Entire processes can be initiated, completed and approved without a lick of human intervention.
With a serious investment, all this is possible - but does your organization have enough scale, discipline and patience to see it through? Will the project ensure cost savings and increases in demand that will create a decent return on investment? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, can complex business processes be completely automated, or are there inevitable exceptions and frequent demands for collaboration?
Somewhere between hard-wired integration and application isolation, there is workflow - or process automation, as it is often described. Workflow can be used to automate tasks completely, but it more commonly combines automation with a human interface. Whether it's a complicated decision point or an exception-prone process, there are times when human reality checks or collaboration with business partners or customers is desired.
Rather than presenting a "black box" with inputs, outputs and little feedback on what's taking place in between, workflow offers a flexible, user-accessible alternative. The technology automates for efficiency while providing maximum visibility of the work taking place. Users and customers alike can see what's happening while it's happening and know what to expect.
Process Automation Reaches Enterprisewide Deployment
While early workflow products could handle finite tasks across constrained LANs, today's Web-based products handle processes more comprehensively. They are blind to geographic, organizational and application boundaries.
"The Internet, the intranet and the extranet are all the same - they're all [about] Web-delivery," says Verne Hanzlik, president of Intranet Solutions, the Eden Prairie, MN-based enterprise content management vendor. "Plugging into the different pieces of the enterprise is a key [aspect] of workflow."
Document-format standards such as XML, in addition to a proliferation of standardized interfaces linking applications, make it possible for people not only to communicate, but also to work collaboratively using information from many different systems and applications. Whether a company implements an enterprise content management system with a workflow component or workflow functionality embedded into a system like ERP, the options are limited more by the imagination than by technology or cost.
Many companies use Web-based workflow as a way to connect to remote internal employees. A just-emerging trend, however, is the practice of inviting customers and business partners to join the process.
"The real trick is to ask, 'Where's the business value when you do that?'" says Harris Hunt, director, product marketing at FileNet, Costa Mesa, CA. "[Companies] are looking to gain customer loyalty, and they're looking to have competitive advantage in getting a customer to come to them instead of somebody else. It does, in fact, lower the cost of doing business to have the customer either see or participate in an interactive process."
The initial point of contact with a customer or business partner may be an electronic form posted on a company's Web site. Alternatively, transactions can be initiated electronically by a call center operator taking an order via phone, by a salesperson taking an order using a laptop (later synchronized), by a store manager placing an order over the WAN or through a customer's ERP system in the supply chain.
Electronic submissions are sent as data directly to business applications and workflow processes. The initial steps may or may not involve human interaction. Steps later in the process - such as a notification of application status - can also be presented via a Web site or email. Digital signature technology is already being applied here. A confirming email can contain a "public key" customers can use to validate their identity before making decisions that move the e-business process forward.
Many business process costs stem from simple requests for information. Customers who can track the status of a home loan application through emails or a password-protected area of a Web site are less likely to call customer service centers every two days for a status update.
Companies have found that many of the initial processes following the receipt of an e-form submission require staff to have a certain degree of experience and training - despite the fact that these steps might involve somewhat tedious and repetitive work. For example, a request for additional information accompanying a loan application may require a decision point based on "if ... then" logic. Determining the most appropriate response may require a look at customer background information. Rules-based programs like workflow have become more capable than ever of automating these steps, leaving customer service representatives to provide better personal service for less routine situations.
According to Mike Gilger, CTO at Identitech, Melbourne, FL, today's workflow products go far beyond the once-used yes/no criteria. Identitech's FYI FloWorks module can automate workflow based on folder or database field criteria. A user can embed up to eight decisions into each "decision block," and they can also create each of these decisions in a very complex way using "Boolean cascade" methodologies.
"When you look at a [business-process] flow diagram, you'll potentially see literally up to eight different output flow lines originating from a single decision task," Gilger explains. "As with many workflow systems, you should be able to cascade your decision tasks as well. Then the eighth output can feed the first input of the next decision task." Gilger adds that the better a workflow application is at making these decisions, the more it can automate the process.
With workflow, tasks immediately follow an appropriate path without time-consuming decisions about where to route the work (and possible errors in doing so). Routine approvals, credit card limit checks, email confirmations and other actions can be done much more quickly and accurately.
One crucial advantage of this technology is that if the business process rules change, the revisions can be rapidly incorporated into the workflow without the delay of retraining everyone and changing procedural manuals. Gilger says many processes demand this flexibility. Insurance claims, for example, must respond to constantly changing government regulation. Even exceptions can be studied to chart patterns in decision-making and create new decision blocks. "As you go along, you're embodying more and more knowledge into the system," he says.
Workflow products also speed processing by splitting up work, handling multiple tasks in parallel and managing the complex synchronizations where paths rejoin. These products can also patiently monitor "wait-until" situations, as in accounting applications where payments may or may not be received within 30 days.
Countless other technology developments are shaping Web-based process automation. For example, workflow is being used much like portal technology in that it is a connecting link between different business systems both within a company and in working with business partners. It also overlaps with and supports EAI middleware.
"The EAI infrastructure together with the workflow layer act as the integration point for various applications like document management, customer care, e-commerce and ERP," states consultant and expert Martin Ader in "The Workflow Handbook," published by the Workflow Management Coalition, Hampshire, U.K. (www.wfmc.org). "The workflow applications handle the processes states ... transfer the context required to activate applications, monitor the behavior of each process and alert responsible actors of any problem that requires attention."
Ader also points to a trend toward linking multiple workflow systems over the Internet (and not just in B2B situations). Even within a company, a single workflow engine (for example, workflow embedded into a CAD or ERP system) may not satisfy the requirements of the entire enterprise. Global business processes may require companies to link workflow systems relying on different languages.
Meanwhile, marketplace and industry developments collide with these business and technology trends. As a few of the case studies accompanying this article suggest, some organizations starting with little automation are now implementing enterprise content management and e-process technologies simultaneously. Alternatively, early users of document technologies are now making the move into e-commerce and purely Internet-based applications. Either way, workflow is a fundamental technology that can bring the combination of intelligent automation and needed human collaboration into modern business processes.
Web Workflow Speeds Custom Manufacturing
New England Business Service (NEBS) recognized that its existing paper-driven work processes were an impediment to manufacturing efficiency and superior customer service. The Townsend, MA-based provider of customized checks, business forms and promotional goods such as pens and coffee mugs wanted better process visibility, tracking and performance throughout its operations.
NEBS owns many small companies, which together market 13 different product lines. The main office receives thousands of new product designs or revisions each day from people at these companies. Fulfillment entails short-run, custom manufacturing, with new product specifications and instructions being the norm. NEBS needed to track work processes through 10 locations throughout the U.S., and it hoped to collapse the seven-day turnaround experienced through its old paper-based approach.
The company reengineered with XML FormFlow, a component of the enterprise content management system from Optical Image Technology (OIT), State College, PA. XML FormFlow lets you initiate processes with a Web-based, XML-formatted form that can be linked to related content and data. Today, approximately 99 percent of these orders are entered and submitted via the Internet on an electronic form designed using XML FormFlow.
Once forms are submitted, the XML-tagged data drives dynamic workflows specific to each design request. For example, a given work order may need to go to staff in production planning, order entry, marketing and others located in any of the affiliated companies. Automatic routing allows NEBS to set up manufacturing systems to make new (or revised) products more immediately available for sale.
XML FormFlow offers popular features such as graphical workflow design tools, electronic warnings for late and rescheduled tasks, and email notifications of work to be done. Users click on an icon attached to the email to call up the work item and appropriate application. Belinda Melanson, product operations manager, praises the table OIT created to pull criteria from the electronic form and trigger accurate, automatic workflow routing to different combinations of 500 possible employees and work groups.
NEBS has reduced the processing time required for taking action on the varied work order requests to an average of six hours - a fraction of the old average of seven days with paper-driven workflows. The company initially spent less than $165,000 on software and hardware, but now plans to purchase additional licenses to automate processes for the accounts payable and e-commerce staff.
"We can do much better planning and do our work much faster, which means we can get a product or a change to a product to market faster," says Melanson. "We had an example last week in which we moved [instructions] from the originator to the end recipient who needed to fix something in 14 minutes. In the past, even if we faxed everything for a rush job, [the change] would have taken two days."
In July, NEBS' pioneering use of OIT's XML FormFlow was recognized with a second-place 2001 Process Innovation Award from Kinetic Information, the Waltham, MA-based research and professional services firm that sponsors the well-known application awards program.
Process Automation Supports a Mobile Workforce
Colonial Pipeline of Atlanta was overwhelmed by the paperwork passed between 800 employees in different locations along 5,300 miles of pipelines running from the Gulf Coast of Texas to refineries in New Jersey. These pipelines deliver a daily average of 80 million gallons of gasoline, diesel fuel, home heating oil, aviation and military fuels.
Many of Colonial's technical and administrative employees are mobile, traveling each day to a new location to maintain company infrastructure. Adding to their travel time and cost, these employees had to return to their offices as often as once a week just to place parts orders and file for expense reimbursements.
Last fall, Colonial purchased a Panagon enterprise content management system from FileNet to provide Web-based information management and workflow. Panagon's central repository has provided secure, browser-based access to information from anywhere at any time, while the workflow functionality has helped make sense of expense reporting and accounts payable processes.
To simplify expense reporting, Colonial Pipeline had its corporate credit card vendor supply flat files of all charges. Merchant codes are used to determine the cost centers for most expenses. Card holders receive email notifications of their expense reports as an early step in the workflow, and after reviewing charges and cost coding, they can route the reports appropriately for proper approval and submission to accounting. Payment occurs faster, which has helped the company negotiate rebates from the card-issuing bank.
Once credit card charges were tamed, Colonial added invoice processing to the workflow. The company requires all suppliers to fax invoices to company headquarters. These images are indexed with the ID number of the employee who purchased the goods as well as the vendor and purchase order numbers and pipeline location. Job routing is based on the employee ID number, with rules set for who has authority to approve various types of purchases. Employees receive email notifications that let them link to the invoice image and other attachments for review. Approved invoice jobs are returned to the accounting department, where the data is loaded into Oracle. In this last step, accounting staff view the images in a split screen and key in any additional transactional information needed for payment.
"Before the imaging invoice system, I handled a lot of paper, and it's hard to explain how much time handling paper takes," says Colonial field worker Jeanell Mulkey. "The new system has made my job a lot easier. I don't have to open and sort the mail. Instead, I can see the invoices on the computer, and the form lets me code them right there. I hit send and they're gone. I used to have to travel one day a week to another station to do invoices. Now I just stay home. I handle other projects, too. My job has changed so much it is unreal."
According to Kelly Nodzak, Colonial Pipeline's transaction manager, "It's a state-of-art way to handle our documents, and it increased productivity and cost savings in many ways. The impact on the customers is that we now have more time to meet their needs because we're more efficient in handling more routine, non-value-added office duties."
Nodzak says the FileNet Panagon software and some required hardware costs less than $200,000. Top management wanted the workflow to be extremely easy to use, with a minimum of training. As a result, customization by an integrator significantly added to these costs, but the investment included planned expansion of the system to add workflows for engineering and legal processes. For example, a new workflow will help Colonial obtain property right-of-way clearance for pipeline expansion projects.
H.W. Wilson Automates Electronic Publishing
The H.W. Wilson Company is well known to librarians and researchers as the source of more than 40 databases with full text, abstracts and indexes of periodicals and books. These databases are made available on the Internet, CD-ROM, magnetic tape and print.
Operating from offices in New York and Ireland, Wilson generates at least six million entries each year from more than 4,000 publications. The work process was formerly entirely manual, with publications physically distributed to hundreds of editors for indexing and abstraction. The company uses low-cost key entry operations in Southeast Asia to generate the full text of some 1,400 licensed publications.
By combining document imaging and workflow, H.W. Wilson has ushered in new levels of speed and efficiency. Using FlowWare workflow software from Plexus Technology Solutions, Sunnyvale, CA, the company created a customized editorial application called WorkCenter.
The process starts by scanning periodicals and articles to be indexed and abstracted. These document images are then automatically assigned to work queues directed at editors with specific subject-matter expertise. Editors log into the WorkCenter system either locally or via the Internet: They can work online or download articles (in PDF format) to their local workstations. Finished abstracts are uploaded when the editors log back into the WorkCenter server.
Assignments may be in more than one queue, so work is pulled on a first-come, first-served basis. As articles age, their priority increases, and a workflow priority management feature automatically assigns them to the head of the task list. Workflow split and merge functionality allows each individual article in a publication to be sent to editors with appropriate expertise. Finished content indexes and abstracts are then merged into appropriate databases by discipline (for example, life science, physics, and so forth).
Another important aspect of the WorkCenter application is its distributed capabilities. Using disconnected workflow features allows servers to coordinate the sharing and hand-off of work at multiple locations.
While the old process of indexing and abstracting a periodical took as long as 17 days, H.W. Wilson's goal is to reduce the entire process to two to three days. Four to five days of transport time have already been eliminated, saving time and slashing a huge shipping budget. The formerly complex assignment process is now done automatically, improving work dispersion. In addition, FloWare's statistical monitoring tools allow managers to keep track of productivity in all stages of the process.
While the cost and time savings are significant, these weren't the only benefits, says Lou Parziale, vice president, information systems.
"We're offering better products because we can now include page images on the Web," says Parziale. "Before we only offered ASCII text [of licensed products], but if an article includes a graphic or a scientific formula, it's very hard to describe that in words. Now when you click on the full text, you can get a PDF image of the original page."
Debra Haverson (hercster@bcpl.net) is a freelance writer based in Baltimore.
|
